


Hindsight

by soulofpetrichor



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Narcissism, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Unhealthy Relationships, this is not an iron dad fic you have been warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-02-28 06:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18751339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulofpetrichor/pseuds/soulofpetrichor
Summary: Six months after the Battle of Earth, Peter reflects on what he's lost.





	Hindsight

Six months.

One hundred and eighty-three days since the end. One hundred and eighty-three days since Tony Stark breathed his last in the ruins of everything he’d built, having paid the ultimate price.

One hundred and seventy-nine since the funeral.

Peter thought he was done grieving. He’d cried on May’s shoulder, and Happy’s, and Pepper’s. He’d gone back to school. It had felt weird at first, but everything fell back into its usual routine with troubling ease. He went to biology and English and trig like he always did. He bombed some tests and aced some others. Ned asked him a few hyper-enthusiastic questions about what happened upstate, but he trailed off after he saw the expression on Peter’s face.

There were some things…there were some things he wasn’t ready to talk about.

Mr. Stark wasn’t the first dead person in Peter’s life. He probably wasn’t going to be the last. This hero thing was _dangerous_ , he’d always known that. He just. He’d never been confronted with it in so visceral a fashion.

Just like it had been when Uncle Ben died, all of a sudden it was just Peter and May again. That was jarring. Happy called to check in on him at first. Every other day. Then once a week. Then every few weeks.

Now, not at all.

He still had the suits Mr. Stark had made him. They were in his closet, arranged neatly in a row on cheap plastic hangers while the rest of his clothes sat rumpled in a pile on the floor. Each of them was probably worth more than May’s apartment. Maybe even the entire building.

Mr. Stark was never going to make him another suit, he reminded himself. He had to take care of these. They were all he was going to get.

Tonight, they sat forgotten in the closet while he studied his psychology textbook. They were learning about personality disorders. He had a test on Friday. He needed to focus.

He minimized the Word document on his laptop and pressed his mouth into a thin line.

A photo of him standing next to Mr. Stark stared back. He was grinning cheesily at the camera and throwing the photographer an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Mr. Stark’s smile, on the other hand, looked forced. It didn’t quite meet his eyes.

Peter took a deep breath and clicked on a different file.

 _Narcissistic personality disorder,_ it began, _is characterized by the following symptoms…_

Peter’s eyes glazed over.

_“This is for your own good.”_

_“Do you know I was the only one who believed in you?”_

Peter’s fist was shaking against the ink-smeared pages of his notebook.

_“I don’t need that on my conscience.”_

_“If you’re nothing without this suit then you shouldn’t have it.”_

Mr. Stark’s face, gaunt and white as a sheet and smeared in soot and ash. A dribble of blood spilled from his lips. His eyes unfocused, his voice weak and distorted. His breath ragged and uneven. His body oddly small and broken.

“Stop!” Peter slammed his fist against the desk and the particle board splintered. “Shit,” he gasped, coming back to himself. His notebook was bent and crumpled. He picked it up with a shaking sigh and did his best to smooth the pages out. He bit his lip.

With a click of the mouse, the lecture slides vanished from his screen and the picture of himself standing next to Mr. Stark was back. Peter looked closely at it.

He hadn’t noticed before, really—maybe he hadn’t wanted to. But Mr. Stark looked…uncomfortable. He visibly shrank away from Peter’s touch. His body was tense. He looked like he was stuck at the dentist.

Peter’s lip trembled.

Mr. Stark was his hero. The best hero there ever was. He saved the world. He saved _Peter_. He made Peter an _Avenger_. He brought everyone back. He defeated Thanos.

But no matter how deep Peter dug, he found it hard to find a single real happy memory of him. He’d spent most of his time ignoring Peter’s texts and calls. He really only showed up when Peter messed something up, so he could yell at him about it. It felt like…

Well, it felt like he’d thought Peter was a waste of his time. Like he regretted bringing him on board in the first place. Peter was a chore to him. Not a friend. Not even his apprentice. An inconvenience. A liability.

It was hard, so hard, to reconcile his memories of Tony Stark with the image of him as a hero.

Uncle Ben, on the other hand—Peter had tons of great memories of him. Teaching, guiding, listening. Being patient. Being kind.

Patient and kind weren’t exactly Tony Stark’s forte.

Peter clenched his teeth and fought back the tears that threatened to spill over, hot and caustic. He thought about texting Happy, and in the same breath decided not to. He thought about texting Ned, but that would open up a whole new can of worms. He couldn’t talk to Pepper about this.

He sat on his bed and buried his face in his hands. He didn’t want the tears. He fought them, but they came all the same, forcing their way out in ugly ways. His shoulders shook as he did his best to keep quiet—he didn’t want to wake May. She’d been through enough.

Alone in his room, Peter Parker wept. Not for himself, and not for something he’d lost, but for something he’d just realized he never had in the first place.


End file.
